skip to content

Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL)

5 February 2025 -  The ClimateWise Principles Independent Review for 2024 represents a landmark year of reporting against an ambitious and challenging set of new Principles.

Download the ClimateWise Principles Independent Review

About

The ClimateWise Principles have provided a framework for the insurance industry to disclose climate-related risk and opportunity since 2007. All ClimateWise members report annually against this framework and reports are independently reviewed, scored and anonymised in a combined report to form the ClimateWise Principles Independent Review. In 2018 the ClimateWise Principles were aligned to the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and in 2024 they were updated to align to a much wider range of requirements including the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).

Findings

The 2024 ClimateWise Principles Independent Review reflects how the industry continues to adapt and challenge itself. The ambitious new set of Principles has seen the scores of ClimateWise members drop since 2023 and this reflects the higher bar created by the changing disclosure environment with a new and challenging baseline against which to measure progress in future years.

The report reveals the great strides members have made in considering new and emerging topics of nature and biodiversity, developing new tools and metrics, all while looking at actions to decarbonise their operations, investments, underwriting and supply chain.  

After a year of major change, aligning to new frameworks, and developing new standards and guidance, there are fewer major changes on the horizon. This stability will give ClimateWise members a base from which to demonstrate continuing improvement against the ClimateWise Principles.

Citing this review

Please refer to this review as University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and Crowe (2025). The ClimateWise Principles Independent Review 2024. Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

Read quotes about the 2024 Principles Review

Read the press release for the Principles Review 2024

Published: February 2025

Author and acknowledgements

The independent reviewers and lead authors of this report were Alex Hindson, Lloyd Richards and Ana Ursu of Crowe UK LLP. The study design and editorial process was led by Sid Miller, Natalie Thompson, Nina Seega and Joanna Wood with input from Tom Yorke.

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not represent an official position of CISL, the University of Cambridge, or any of its individual business partners or clients.

Copyright

Copyright © 2024 University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL). Some rights reserved. The material featured in this publication excluding photographs is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)